Student pranked by airport TSA worker

Philadelphia  A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia’s airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carryon luggage.

The worker is no longer employed by the TSA after the incident this month, a spokeswoman said.

Rebecca Solomon, 22, a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened on Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.

In the Jan. 10 column for The Michigan Daily, she recounted how she struggled to come up with an explanation, wondering if it was bomb-detonating material slipped in by a terrorist or drugs put there by a smuggler.

“Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I’d never seen this baggie before,” Solomon wrote.

A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his.

The worker “waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should’ve seen the look on my face,” she said.